You're advocating a workaround to allow someone to name a private method the same as a public one. That's asking for trouble.

Not at all, I am advocating that a chosen system for creating private methods should not restrict me from doing something as stupid as naming a private method after an inherited public one. After all, this is perlmonks.org and not www.bsdm-javacafe.org right? ;)

but seriously ...

private methods should not block a perfectly valid (inherited) public method from being called.

Why not?

Because, privacy (IMO) means it is only visible and relevant to the local class. So what I do in my bedroom... uhm... i mean my class, is up to me and the government ... ah,... uhm... I mean other programmers, have no right to tell me what to do.

Okay, so i am not being totally serious. But my point is that a generalized system of method privacy should be really truely private, and therefore invisible to anything outside of my class, and only applicable/relevant within my class.